Goldman Sachs is folding its London hedge fund operations and moving staff to the US

A sign is displayed in the reception of Goldman Sachs in Sydney Thomson Reuters

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc's hedge fund Goldman Sachs Investment Partners (GSIP), which was one of the largest-ever hedge fund launches in history, is closing its London operations and shifting staff members to New York, four sources told Reuters.

About eight staff members who made up the London team were recently told to move to Goldman's Battery Park City headquarters or find a new job internally, said the sources.

The move was triggered by managing director Nick Advani, who led the hedge fund from London and said in June he would be stepping down from his role, the sources said.

Advani, now an advisory director at Goldman, did not respond to requests for comment. Advani is expected to leave the firm later this year, the sources said.

Managing director Raluca Ragab, who had been formally leading the London-based team since Advani's departure, will leave Goldman once the move is complete, one of the sources said.

Mark Lennihan/APMulti-strategy hedge fund GSIP launched in November 2008 with $7 billion in assets, making it one of the largest hedge fund launches at the time. GSIP, run globally by co-heads Raanan Agus and Kenneth Eberts, sits within Goldman's asset management division.

But a focus on value investing with around 20 positions mainly in equities became more challenging in recent years, a former employee told Reuters.

Goldman's Global Long Short Partners Offshore fund posted losses of 8.2 percent in the year to end-September in 2016 after small gains of 1.5 percent in 2015, according to an investor letter reviewed by Reuters.

Last September, three of the fund's top five credit positions were in the Europe Middle East and Africa region, according to the letter.

Assets fell in 2014 after Goldman pulled out $2.8 billion in response to the U.S. Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the Volcker rule, which restricted banks' proprietary trading. The fund now manages around $3.5 billion.

Separately, Goldman may move up to 1,000 staff out of London in response to Britain's vote to leave the European Union, it was reported last month.

(Reporting by Maiya Keidan in London and Olivia Oran ia New York, additional reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Simon Jessop)